Archive for June, 2010

Has anyone seen the movie “Date Night” with Tina Fey and Steve Carell? There’s a part where Tina’s character goes off on how every night her kids seem surprised that they have to put pajamas on before bed. That’s how I feel about this guessing game with ovulation. You would think that by try #5 I’d know when to schedule the insemination. But with each cycle, I find myself questioning and second guessing every symptom and test result.

I had the horrible wrenching pelvis pain again last night. For the past half year or so it’s been showing up around days 9 and 10 just to throw me off. I know from previous tries that my LH surges and my temperature rises between days 11 and 13. Yet some on the internet tell me that what I experience is ovulation pain, which means I’ve already ovulated(?!?). You see why I’m farmisht? (It’s a Yiddish thang)

K reminds me that there’s always the cervical opening to consider. She dove in this morning and said it seems to be opening but isn’t quite there yet. So, we wait. And I’ll have E2 come by days 11-13 as before. But mark my words, if it doesn’t work again this time, I’m gonna start him up early next month.

And, if it doesn’t work this time, and, if my periods and pre-ovulation keep getting more painful, I need to grapple with the possibility of the big E. Endometriosis. I hate the internet.

One thing that is new (and exciting) is that it looks like we’re moving! For a long time K and I have been talking about getting out of our ‘hood and living somewhere safer. Our block has crime that rivals some of our old Oakland residences. As much as we like our house, the location makes zero sense for having a baby and raising a kid. Although I always thought I’d be pregnant, if not already have an infant, before such a move, it looks like we’re following a certain chocolatier’s advice: “Strike that… Reverse it.”

Who knows? Maybe buying a house with a giant play structure already built in the backyard will set the mood for an egg/sperm love connection.

Let us begin with a riddle: What do you get when you cross the Continental Divide and the 45th parallel?
Answer: HOME!!!

It’s so good to be back, and yet…
Leaving NM and my sister was/is very hard for me. I know she is better off than when we arrived, but I also know she could be much better. The entire three-day drive home, I vascillated wildly between excitement and sadness.

Pup in the middle, keeping her eyes on the road ahead

Now that we’re back, we’re trying to find our bearings (we were gone for 4 weeks!). For the second month in a row, K and I got our periods at the same time (literally); it’s taken over 8 years for us to sync/align! Now, in between the loads of laundry and dishes we have to do here, we need to get in front of a calendar and figure out June’s insemination dates.

I’ve decided to try getting pregnant this month with a minimum of alternative health care appointments. It turns out I don’t have any overgrowth or parasitic infection in my gut (phew!), so I want to go with the theory that I am actually pretty healthy and just need to keep availing my eggs to sperm.

Besides returning to my bed and my city and my friends, I’m really glad to be back on the blog. Hopefully we’ll have an easy time scheduling inseminations with E2, and I’ll only have wonderful things to write about (cue chirping bluebirds and smiley rainbows).

I’ve recently learned something new about blogging: it’s not a high priority. I also learned that the subject of my blog, getting pregnant, is not as high a priority as I thought.

I’ve been in New Mexico since my last blog post. My sister, who’s been very ill, called K and I to come help her and be with her kids. We didn’t hesitate to hop in the car with our pup and drive the 24 hours to get here.

From previous posts you know that I’ve said I would keep working on getting pregnant until it happened. But since I’ve been here I’ve realized that the already alive trump the yet conceived.

Another thing I’ve learned about blogging is that when I am unable to blog, my mind still thinks like the blog. So many funny and ridiculous things happened on our drive out here that I wanted to share. I wanted to blog about the many pregnancy tests I peed on in the most random motels of Idaho and Utah despite the fact that I knew I wasn’t pregnant. But I have had zero time to write.

Another thing I’ve learned from helping my sister is that we can do this thing. We’ve gotten a lot of practice in being nurturers, caretakers, etc. K and I have hung more loads of laundry and washed more dishes in these three weeks than in our entire lives. And it’s been great. Knowing that we can help keep a household with kids running, even as aunts, makes me feel so secure about becoming parents for real.

We missed an ovulation. Hopefully we’ll be able to head home before the next one. I was extremely anxious about missing “a try,” but now I’m just grateful I was able to be here with my family.